


Words to Live By

by Rinkafic



Series: Evan loves David [8]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 14:08:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/675259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rinkafic/pseuds/Rinkafic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I choose to not believe David is gone.</p><p> </p><p>Warning: Contemplation of suicide</p>
            </blockquote>





	Words to Live By

The alarm on Lorne’s watch beeped. He had been lying awake waiting for it to go off, he rarely slept more than two or three hours a night anymore. He had put David’s pillow in the closet and taken to sprawling out in the center of the bed, but he couldn’t completely fool himself, he still sensed the missing part of himself. 

Time to start the day. He rolled off the mattress and shuffled over to his desk. He slid into the chair and opened the drawer. He drew out his service pistol and a sharpie, setting each on the desk in front of him, in the same place he had put them yesterday, and several dozen yesterdays before. He placed his palms flat on the desk and stared at the gun. 

David was gone. 

He stroked a finger over the sight, down the cold barrel, tracing the trigger guard before he pulled his hand back. He knew exactly how long it would take to lift it and place it against his head, he had done it before, he’d timed it, figured out how long it would take him to actually go through with this. He knew the weight of the gun, how it fit into his hand, how the grip felt against his hand. He had spent hours with the gun clutched tightly in his hand, holding it so hard that when he set it down, his palm was imprinted with the pattern of the rubber grip.

Evan knew how it tasted. In those first days after David was gone, his routine had been to sit with the barrel resting lightly on his tongue, gathering the courage to pull the trigger. The memory of gun oil and cold metal would never leave him, it was an indelible memory. But that had been his old routine.

The gun would end it. There would be one final moment of excruciating pain, then it would all be over. 

He rolled his left wrist over, staring at the fading words and design on his forearm. With a sigh, he looked over at the gun one last time. Then he lifted it up and slid it into the holster on his gun belt, which had been hooked over the edge of the chair. He picked up the sharpie and pulled the cap off with his teeth. 

He held his arm steady as he retraced the words on his arm, done in italic calligraphy - lettering Evan remembered from high school art class. “Today they might find his body.” The letters started at the inside of his elbow and ended just above his watchband. Usually, they were hidden by his uniform shirt sleeve. 

There were people on base that knew about the words, he hadn’t gone out of his way to hide them. At the beginning, when he had first started choosing the pen over the gun in the morning, Sheppard had caught him rolling his sleeve up or down one of the numerous times as he felt the need to look. He’d grasped Evan’s wrist on the third day and silently pushed his sleeve up, reading the words. With his lips in a taut line, Sheppard had tugged the shirt down and buttoned it, then patted Evan’s arm. It was the only acknowledgement he could give of Evan’s loss. 

There were other words, in other places on his body, in some of the places David liked to touch him. Those were for later, when his duty shift was over and he was in his quarters in the interminable hours and the solitude got to be too much to bear. 

“David’s favorite flower is a rose.” He had drawn and redrawn the rose on his thigh so often, he thought it might be permanent now. 

In tiny numerals, David’s birth date was written on his belly, right beside his belly button, in the spot David always liked to nuzzle and tickle him. Evan ran his finger over that spot, though it didn’t tickle the way it did when David’s finger or tongue stroked over him there.

He knew David would be livid, if he knew about the routine. If he knew the choice Evan made each morning. The thought made him smile, he wanted David to come back and lash into him for it, he dared fate to send his lover back to call him to task for his suicide game. 

On that day, he would gladly show David the tattoo he had on his right thigh, one he had found a native artist to do on one away mission as Sils and Cadman stood watch at the door. “I live because David wills it so.”

 

The End


End file.
